Intelligence Liaison Officer (ILO) Program

Overview

In 2008, Ohio Homeland Security (OHS) began a statewide Terrorism Liaison Officer (TLO) Program with the goal of increasing local, statewide and regional intelligence collaboration by building relationships on a grass-roots level with local representatives, as well as to foster timely reporting of information to the Ohio Fusion Center Network (OFCN) for the purpose of analysis, sharing, and dissemination of intelligence.

In 2015, the TLO program expanded beyond just terrorism and was retitled the Intelligence Liaison Officer (ILO) Program. However, the program change is not simply a name change, but a new focus to include an “all crimes related to infrastructure protection” initiative. The initial phase of the expansion focused on local law enforcement, local fire and emergency medical service (EMS) departments as well as corrections. The following disciplines have also been added to expand the ILO network; emergency management, public health, US military & National Guard, education, adult parole authority, state & local government agencies, and select private sector businesses. The inclusion of these disciplines is expected to increase information sharing as well as grow the statewide network of available multi-discipline personnel.

The ILO Program provides local agencies and first responders an increased intelligence competency. Agencies may enhance their street-level intelligence collection by having trained ILOs with the ability to recognize threat indicators and report suspicious activity through their agency to the OFCN.